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An interesting discovery

On November 24th, Fox News carried an article which says that scientists in the U.S. and Switzerland have discovered that “all humans alive today are the offspring of a common father and mother.”

“Mark Stoeckle at Rockefeller University and David Thaler at the University of Basel” the article said, “reached this striking conclusion after analyzing the DNA ‘bar codes’ of five million animals from 100,000 different species. The bar codes are snippets of DNA that reside outside the nuclei of living cells – so-called mitochondrial DNA, which mothers pass down from generation to generation.”

They added that the evidence shows that this original couple existed a mere 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, which is a very short time, apparently, in the evolutionary clock. They attribute this “Adam and Eve” phenomenon to some catastrophic event in which everyone perished except these two people.

They also concluded that about 90% of all animal species alive today descend from the same parents giving birth at roughly the same time.

What evolutionists expect us to believe. This finding, if accurate, means either (1) that two gorillas graduated from gorilla-hood into humanity at exactly the same time and in exactly the same place, so close in time and place that they were able to reproduce, or (2) that after some horrific catastrophic event, these two individuals managed to survive, alone on the entire planet, in exactly the same place.

Already evolution has required that we believe that none of the life forms on this planet was either designed or created by anyone, but that they all came from a body of water that was struck by lightning and/or cosmic rays. Gradually they made their way up the evolutionary ladder, after billions of years, and this through a series of mutations which are caused by radiation and cosmic rays. The whole earth, therefore, including all that inhabits it, is the result not of design, but chance.

Those who hold to evolution ridicule the account in Genesis about the creation and fall of man. Too fantastic to believe. Yet they are not abashed to require of us to believe in the infinitesimally tiny chance of the earth’s evolving, together with its living contents, by hazard and mutation. It is an act of faith which is too absurd for me to make.

Does it not make much more sense, even apart from religion, to say that the structure of the human body, for example, which is so astonishing in its complexity, efficiency, and beauty of engineering, was in fact designed by a very intelligent being? Would we not say this about the Golden Gate Bridge

In fact, the design of all plant and animal life cries out for this same designer.

The finding, as well, shows that 90% of all animal species on earth “come from parents that all began giving birth at roughly the same time, less than a quarter-million years ago,” as the article said.

Evolution would demand that each one of the innumerable species of animals existing today — when we think of the insects, for example — all at the same time and in exactly the same place found mates and reproduced successfully so as to make a separate species. This supposedly happened after a catastrophic event that wiped out everything except these animal couples who managed to survive and reproduce.

So in addition to the leap of faith we must make to accept that the order and design of animal life happened by chance, against virtually infinite odds, we are now required to add onto this evolutionary Credo the fact that 90% of animal species were wiped out by some unknown and mysterious calamity, but that, by chance, these animal species survived and reproduced because the last male and female happened to find each other and fall in love.

This is incredibly absurd.

Why evolution makes no sense. Common sense, what in philosophy we call the first principles of reason, knows that from nothing, nothing comes. It is impossible, in other words, that being come from nothing. This same common sense tells us that the cause of anything must have a perfection more than the effect has it. For example, a young pine tree cannot reproduce itself, since it does not yet have the perfection of its nature. When it achieves maturity, it is able to produce pine cones and reproduce the species. So the nature of pine must be more perfect in the mature tree than in the seedling which it reproduces. This is true of all living things. Reproduction occurs when the nature achieves perfection. In children, for example, the nature is not yet perfect, and unable, therefore, to reproduce. In old age, the nature is declining and unable to reproduce. (1)

Evolution requires that something higher come from something lower. The gorilla becomes a man. They attribute this to mutations caused by cosmic rays. While it is true that accidental mutations may occur within a species (change in color, for example), it is impossible that a higher species evolve from a lower one, since this would mean that something more is produced from something less, or that something comes from nothing.

Constancy. Evolution, furthermore, cannot explain the constancy of the order of nature. Chance is something that comes and goes. It cannot produce a constant order. In fact, the very word chance is not even intelligible except by comparing it to order. That “something happen by chance” can only be understood in comparison to what happens by ordinary causation. For example, we might say that someone by chance found a buried treasure when he was digging in his yard. “Chance” here is only meaningful when we consider that in 99.9% of cases, you do not find a buried treasure when you plant your roses.

Constancy demands a cause, a constant cause.

Eternal matter? Evolution, in rejecting the Creator, requires that matter be eternal. For from nothing, nothing comes. They reject as absurd the idea of a God who is Subsistent Being, eternal, infinite, without beginning or end. Yet in their system they must posit a matter which is eternal, which had no beginning, which existed from all eternity. If the Supreme Being with no beginning is absurd, then why is not eternal matter absurd? Or shall we say that one day matter just “poofed” into existence, the so-called “Big Bang?” But common sense objects: From nothing, nothing comes.

Intelligent design. Quite a few prominent atheistic scientists have come to assert something called intelligent design. They feel comfortable in this assertion since — they think — it preserves their atheism but at the same time preserves them from the absurdities which I have described.

Intelligent design, however is a logical rocket ship which goes straight up to an Infinite Supreme Being, who has no beginning and no end, and who is Subsistent Being itself. For the obvious question is: Who designed the designer? This question is relentless in its demands. Nor can it be satisfied by saying there is an infinite series of designers. For again from nothing, nothing comes. An infinite number of falling dominoes, for example, does not explain their movement. Someone had to push the first domino.

In other words, the existence of our finite world, which can so easily perish, requires the existence of a Being who is Being itself, Being by His very nature, who can never lose being, and who always possessed it, and who therefore had no beginning and will have no end.

(1) It is for this reason that sexual attraction — which is ordered to reproduction — increases as the perfection of the nature increases, and decreases as the perfection of the nature decreases. People in their old age are not as attractive as they were in their youth.